During the journey to the Fountain, in one particular scene Blackbeard orders Quartermaster to bring him six pistols, so he could play a game of improvised Russian roulette with his daughter - just to show Jack (and us) how ruthless he is in his quest of immortality, ruthless enough to risk his own daughter's life. A couple minutes later when said daughter asks if he knew which gun is loaded, he answers "yes" in a manner that (once again) is meant to show us his ruthlessness and egoism. It is implied that he truly didn't care about said daughter - that's the impression we should have. But, as you can remember, those pistols were brought to him by the Quartermaster, and Quartermaster was gifted with a second sight, having the ability to see things before they happen, so he probably was able to see which pistols Blackbeard takes - and leave them unloaded. So, while Blackbeard couldn't know which pistol is loaded, he knew Quartermaster left right pistols unloaded, and acted without doubt because of that, not because his apparent lack of fatherly love.

The Spanish in On Stranger Tides invest a lot in sending an expedition (compared to the others) and making to the Fountain of Youth, which would have potentially given them the sort of power associated with immortal life, practically in one piece, what do they actually do? Destroy the damn thing for the "pagan temple" that it is. For all their zeal, the Spanish basically made their last hurrah as a great power with that act.

The Spanish hardly interact with supernatural phenomena as well. They never get to see mermaids themselves, and while they effectively share a room with zombies, a voodoo powered pirate and a magic fountain that grants (additional) life by the end of the movie, they never get to see evidence of their powers, so to speak. The only time this is vulnerated is when the 200+ conquistador is fished off by two superstitious fishermen, but he quickly dies when presented to the more "rational" king and his minion. So we have two additional examples of fridge brilliance here:

Magic needs to be believed first to exist in the POTC world. The Spanish don't believe in magic, so it vanishes before them.

Or he could've run out of time (at a suspiciously dramatic moment) just then.

The Spanish did have two encounters with magic. The Spanish fishermen pulled a man out of the water in the ocean who had been there for too long not to drown. Second, the Spaniard and his men would've had to use the magic portal of gravity-defying water to reach the Fountain in the first place.

Historically, the Spanish and Catholics in general were far less inclined to believe in and persecute witchcraft than Protestants. In fact in the 1600s the Spanish Inquisition declared that witchcraft was impossible, and that people claiming themselves or others to be witches were lying either out of ignorance or of malice.

Bear in mind that there is no moral way to use the Fountain of Youth. It requires you to murder or duel someone, and at most it'll buy you 120 years before you have to do it again. Avoiding death won't be so cool come Judgment Day when Christ judges the living and the dead, consigning unrepentant murderers to a fiery Hell for all eternity.

In On Stranger Tides, Jack asks Angelica if he can use her trick of lying by telling the truth. Then you realize that he already has, when telling Murtogg and Mullroy why he's in Port Royal.

In Curse Of The Black Pearl, during Jack and Will's sword fight in the blacksmith shop, Will at one point improvised a weapon by grabbing a glowing rod from the forge. Sparrow, like anyone from a culture where metalsmithery was common, would be aware that steel in that condition is too malleable to stand up against a cold blade; one hard stroke would cut right through it. Nonetheless, Jack appeared genuinely spooked. But there's an entirely feasible explanation for his response: the (very painful) experience of being branded has left Jack with a phobia about red-hot metal. Not that he panics at the very sight of it; he had no trouble handling a similar glowing rod to get the donkey moving. But when somebody is coming at him with such a thing, all Jack wants to do is get away.

In On Stranger Tides, Jack leaves Angelica in the exact same situation he was in before The Curse Of The Black Pearl. On an island, her ship stolen by Barbossa and with a pistol that has one shot.

Made more poignant since she used that one shot against the fellow who marooned her on the island. Unfortunately for her, her aim's not as good as Jack's.

The mermaids in On Stranger Tides have horizontal fins, which are characteristics of aquatic mammals, while actual fish have vertical fins.

Ragetti is very protective of his wooden eye, despite the fact it's mentioned to not fit properly and keeps falling out. Come At World's End, we find out why.

The romance between Phillip and Syrena is poignant because they're both the same. Phillip is a preacher among pirates, struggling to keep his faith and kindness intact while being surrounded by scoundrels. Syrena is a mermaid who doesn't share her kin's bloodlust, and she tries to save Phillip while the other mermaids are slaughtering the rest of the crew. They're both kind souls among unkind souls; they're great for each other.

While that's a romantic notion, the other end of the idea is that "How do merpeople reproduce?" See Futurama's Atlanta episode for a "logical" answer. BUT: What if a mermaid's kiss makes a human man immune to drowning and either they do it on land as humans or if they do it as fish, he can survive underwater to do the dirty deed? The film never answers the question directly because of squick and sometimes imagination is better. Notice how there were NO mer men. If they do hatch from eggs like fish, maybe the majority are born female (like alligators and crocs needing a certain temperature range to make males) and logically, they capture human males to provide what they need. Mermaids be pirates of a kind, slavers too.

Well, she does have legs when she's not in water. Also if they're mammal based... maybe it's like whales?

It's mentioned that being "zombified" makes the person more compliant, so it's very likely that Blackbeard couldn't turn himself into a zombie and, if he got somebody else to, he'd be under their command.

He makes Voodoo zombies. They're not immortal so much as drugged slaves who don't feel pain. That's definitely not something Blackbeard would want for himself.

Right. On a related note, I can't remember if the one we saw stabbed in the chest who pulled the sword out was in any other scenes or not. If he wasn't, then he presumably died not too long after, because that looked fatal. Like the falsehood of the Instant Death Bullet, most wounds don't kill instantly so he could have fought on for a small period. Of course, if he was seen later on, then either they have really good medical services (doubtful unless Blackbeard uses some sort of other magic) or they're not true Voodoo zombies and just a new variation of the same ones we've seen throughout the films.

There was a zombie who was stabbed in the chest, pulled it out and did not die. He was seen in other scenes; he's the one who threw the voodoo doll of Jack off the cliff and he's one of the two remaining zombie officers when the Spanish arrive at the Fountain.

Jack calls Blackbeard "ressurrector of the dead" after learning about the zombies, implying they are actual reanimated corpses. At the same time, though, they're pretty clearly slaves to Blackbeard's will, so again, not something he'd willingly do or allow done to himself.

Also, think about that line a bit more. "Resurrector of the dead". Dead being the key word. The cook who Blackbeard kills after the mutiny is later seen among the zombies. By the looks of it, Blackbeard can only make someone a zombie AFTER they're already dead. Quite the problem if you're trying to AVOID death.

While it appears to be a beginning to a new trilogy with little connection to the previous three films, On Stranger Tides continues the themes of the third film, that is the "shrinking" of the world through the loss of its supernatural elements, in this case the Fountain of Youth and Blackbeard.

Why did Jack want the cursed treasure so much when it's implied he knew it was cursed, or at least knew the rumors? Cursed or not, he was probably looking for a way out of his deal with Jones, either by trading him the treasure or by hoping the curse would somehow make Jones unable to bind him to service.

On that line, I've always been bothered by the crew of the Black Pearl throwing Bootstrap Bill overboard and acting like they're done with it and will never see him again. He's under the same curse as all the rest of them, so he couldn't have been killed. Which leads to the question of why he is with Davy Jones' crew later on, if he didn't have death to fear at first.

Both counts are explained. They bound him to a cannon so he'd sink to the bottom, where the pressure was so great he couldn't move. They might not have been able to kill him, but they certainly put him in an And I Must Scream situation. He sold his soul to Jones not out of fear of death like most of his crew, but to get out of there. In his own words: "If there was any chance of escaping this fate, I'd take it. I'd trade anything for it..."

Didn't Barbossa make it pretty clear that they didn't know that the treasure was cursed or simply didn't believe in the curse until they had spent almost all of the treasure, while at least implying that they had thrown Bootstrap Bill overboard before they had figured it out? Why else would they do it at all? They do spend the next eight years desperately searching for his child while presumably kicking themselves for 'killing' Bootstrap Bill.

The one with the wooden eye mentions that they "didn't find out they needed his blood to lift the curse until after" they had thrown him overboard, and they threw him overboard because he thought they deserved the curse. So obviously, after they realized they were cursed, and started trying to find a way to break it. Before they found one, Bootstrab is thrown overboard for some slight involving it. Then they somehow ( the Voodoo Queen who turned out to be Calypso, perhaps?) find out how to break the curse, and then go looking for the only source of Turner blood left: Will.

When Jack tosses his compass to Gibbs, he says "This will lead you to freedom." Now, that makes a bit of sense, because it would point him to a way away from White Cap Bay as opposed to wandering around in the jungle. Of course, when Gibbs shows up at the end with the Black Pearl in hand, he mentions the compass led him right to it. Now, that raises the question; why was he looking for the Pearl if he wasn't aware of it's actual fate? Then, as you're dozing off that night thinking of the movie, it hits you in the face- remember what Jack told Elizabeth when they were marooned in Curse of the Black Pearl about what freedom is?

For those who don't remember, the answer is The Pearl.

I believe it's actually because the compass doesn't point to where you want it to, it points to the location of what your heart desires the most. Gibbs simply really wanted the Pearl.

Angelica might remind one of Elizabeth Swan or Anamaria, both physically and in her personality. She is dark, with an accent and a temper similar to Anamaria's, and she looks a little bit like Elizabeth. With Angelica being the one woman Jack ever loved, this may be why he found Elizabeth and Anamaria a bit attractive later in his adventures; they both reminded him of Angelica. It's also possible that those three women have the traits that Jack likes in women.

Angelica also provides Fridge Brilliance for Will Turner, and Jack's insistence that "pirate is in your blood." In Curse of the Black Pearl why is Jack so certain that Will will turn out to be a "pirate" (metaphorically or literally) like his father? He probably witnessed Angelica go through a similar identity crisis. Angelica clearly tried to fight the pirate in her by becoming a nun, but after being seduced by Jack, accepted that she had too much of her father in her for that life. Granted, Jack had no idea her father was Blackbeard until On Stranger Tides, but he still may have known her father was a pirate.

Though not outright said, a bit of thought reveals why the mermaids are so hostile to humans in general and sailors in particular: Humans were kidnapping, torturing, and murdering mermaids for their tears in order to use the Fountain. If anything is going to inspire a people to Disproportionate Retribution, it would be that.

The reason Syrena gives for saving Philip was that he was "different" from the rest of the crew in that he was a protector which would indicate that the previous humans she encountered were less than friendly. Its possible the mermaids have an ability to sense the intentions and goals of individuals and that they're helpful and friendly to those who are nonselfish and antagonistic to those with less altruistic goals. This can be supported by Syrena delivering the silver chalices to Jack when he was seeking them out to heal Angelica who'd been poisoned even though she had no way of knowing that he wasnt seeking to use them for himself.

The voodoo doll into the river scene. Wood as we know, floats. So as long as the doll didn't hit the rocks but instead landed in the water, its light weight would insure it bobbed to the surface. Thus as we've already seen how the doll can control what happens to Jack if it is bobbing along the surface of the water than he must also, even if the water shouldn't be deep enough to keep him from sinking to the bottom of it hard enough to die in the fall. Thus why he could only have survived the jump after the doll was thrown in!

The fountain of youth is an upright rock formation shaped like a circle (with its waters dripping down). An unbroken circle to represent eternal life.

Hoist the Colours, the song played throughout At World's End, at first sounds like a generic pirate tune. But watch the film a second time and you suddenly realise why singing that song in particular heralds a meeting of the Brethren Court. It's about the sealing of Calypso.

Hell, the entire song is brilliant. It pretty much outlines the movie's plot and backstory.

The king and his mennote The First Brethren Court

Stole the queen from her bed

And bound her in her bonesnote Sealed Calypso into her human form, Tia Dalma

The seas be ours

And by the powers

Where we will, we'll roamnote (Human) pirates wanted full control of the seas, as later referenced by Barbossa.

Some have died

And some are alive

Others sail on the seanote Referring to pirates as a whole. The third line may refer to pirates who are neither dead nor fully alive - examples being the cursed crew in the first movie and Davy Jones's henchmen in the second and third... and perhaps foreshadowing (if unintentionally) Blackbeard's zombies in Movie 4.

With the keys to the cagenote The nine Pieces of Eight are the "keys" needed to release Calypso from her human "cage"

And the Devil to paynote Davy Jones is referred to as "The Devil", and Jack, of course, owed him a debt of service. And as for several other characters, it could refer to the desire to pay Jones back (i.e. revenge) for the havoc his presence has created.

We lay to Fiddler's Greennote Refers to the mythical pirate paradise - think the exact opposite of Davy Jones' Locker. Shipwreck Cove is implied to be the world's last pirate haven - run by pirates, only for pirates.

The bell has been raised from its watery grave

Hear its sepuchral tonenote The Brethren Court is being called together for the first time in several decades.

A call to all, pay heed the squallnote The overall "squall" of the conflict between the Pirates and the EITC. Also serves as Foreshadowing to the final battle being fought in a maelstrom, which is a type of squall.

Turn your sails to homenote If you're not prepared to pick a side, it's best to keep clear of the situation

In Dead Man's Chest I found the group of people in the swamp in holding a vigil for Captain Jack to be bit odd, but then I remembered something from Jack's backstory: the reason he was branded a pirate was because he freed a group of slaves. The people in the swamps could very well be the slaves he freed and they're paying their respects to the person that saved them.

The mid-battle wedding's dialogue from At World's End is pretty funny the first time through, but when you view it again, knowing that Will is about to be killed and revived as the Dutchman's new captain, you realize that the parts they omitted from a traditional marriage ceremony were just as important as the wisecracks. Why? Because none of them — not Will, not Elizabeth, not Barbossa — had the chance to say till death do us part/as long as you both shall live, meaning that their married state persists even after Jones kills Will.

Aside from the fact that the Flying Dutchman under Will's command has sided with the Black Pearl, there's another good reason why the British East India Company armada simply turned tail: they were following the "rules of engagement." With the Endeavor gone sunk and Lord Beckett certainly blown up with the ship, the fleet had just lost their commander and flagship in one go, reducing it into a disorganized mess. Leaving it easy pickings for the pirates.

Perhaps a mild one, but notice how Jack always seems to stagger around semi-drunkenly? He moves on land as if he's still on a ship!

A commonly remarked-on affliction of sailors in reality as well as fiction, especially in the days when ships were much slower and had no compensation for this action. It's known as having 'sea-legs' (once it sets in, one gets far less motion-sickness.) However, in reality it usually stops within a few hours of coming ashore, whereas with Jack it seems permanent.

Given that this is Jack, is it surprising he would fake a permanent case of sea-legs? In fights he seems to be moving normally, except for when he would benefit from sea-legs.

In At World's End when the pirates first see the massive armada, Cotton's parrot says "abandon ship!" And flies away. He returns when the battle is won and says "Wind in the sails!" as the pirates are celebrating. Way back in Curse of the Black Pearl, Gibbs said that phrase is assumed to mean "Yes". The parrot was cheering!

The inspiration Jack has in At World's End to use a bench as "leverage" to lift the brig door off its hinges seems pretty arbitrary unless you watch the first movie right before it. It's how Will breaks Jack out of Port Royal Jail!

Not so much fridge as it is a subtle Call Back, considering Jack is muttering "think like the whelp" over and over before discovering that the hinges on the Dutchman's brig are the same kind (half-barrel hinges) that Will busted him out of.

In Curse of the Black Pearl How does Jack know the other prisoners won't have any luck getting the key from the dog? It's his father's dog. Aside from that, the key isn't for the jail cell anyways.

Actually Jack and Governor Swan acknowledge that the dog has the keys for the cell, and it's implied that Pintel and Ragetti escaped by getting the dog to bring the keys to them. Otherwise why would Jack try to get it once he was alone?

It's a joke, the same pirates have been trying to get the dog to give them the keys in the ride the movie is based on for fifty years

The original theme park attraction featured Blackbeard attacking a coastal settlement aboard his ship, the Wicked Wench. Around the time when Dead Man's Chest was released, the ride was updated to include characters from the films, and Barbossa replaces Blackbeard as the Wicked Wench's captain. Come On Stranger Tides, which features Blackbeard as the villain, and at the end of the film, Barbossa kills Blackbeard and takes command of his former ship. Looks like Disney was doing some foreshadowing...

On a related note, supplemental materials for the films state that the Black Pearl was originally christened the Wicked Wench. So, when Barbossa is the captain of the Wicked Wench in the theme park attraction, he's in his rightful place as captain of the Black Pearl!

It makes sense that Davy Jones has a completely bizarre accent- he's immortal, and has been around long enough to become a legend, and has very little contact with the world beyond his ship. He could easily be hundreds or even thousands of years old. His first language has either died out or evolved to the point that modern speakers sound completely different.

He's around for just a couple of centuries. Davy Jones is not an ancient name, and his clothes, seen when he temporary reversed to his human form, are of 16 or maybe 17 century fashion, not much earlier and definitely not thousand-years old. And accent... Well, as Word of God states, Davy Jones is Scottish. And really, he had very little contact beyond his ship, so his natural accent could change during all those years with the same scum all around.

Throughout the series, sea turtles are constantly brought up as a Running Gag by several pirates. The name of the pirate port, Tortuga, is Spanish for turtle.

Let's be honest: Davy Jones' pet kraken doesn't look all that much like a kraken is supposed to, basically a scaled-up squid or octopus, which would include a beak like those cephalopods have rather than a circular maw of sharp teeth. However, there is a mythical/folkloric cephalopod that does have a mouth like that: the lusca, which, coincidentally, is from the Caribbean!

In Curse, as Jack palms the cursed coin, Will is watching intently and has a brief look of realisation. As he's not surprised at all when Jack later frees him and is also cursed, this is presumably the point at which he worked out what Jack's plan was. Supported by his instant, if clandestine, support of Jack's negotiations with Barbossa.

In World's End, there's a similar moment between Jack and Will whilst meeting with Beckett and Davy Jones. When Elizabeth tells Will that freeing his father is a lost cause, Will replies that "No cause is lost, so long as there's one fool left to fight it", and glances significantly at Jack, who grins back - Again, Will's worked it out and is offering help.

At World's End- When William sets sail and proceeds to leave Elizabeth behind in a bittersweet ending, his father assures him that she cannot go with them. No explanation is given for why this has to happen, merely that it must be this way. Which leaves the audience to wonder- given that Elizabeth successfully navigated to Davy Jones' locker at the beginning of the movie, and that Will and his father can both apparently survive the journey intact, what exactly is preventing this from happening? Is there some as yet unexplained aspect to the bargain of the Dead Man's Chest? Is Will's father just a big believer in the old adage that it is bad luck to bring a woman on board a ship? Does he secretly not approve of the marriage and want to make his daughter in law miserable?

Word of God is that if the wife stays faithful for the ten years, the captain can elect to leave and become mortal again, and appoint someone else. Meeting up before ten years isn't staying true to the rules, and that would turn Will into a sea monster.

How exactly did the Peligostos get William into that cage without anybody escaping?

Sharp sticks and the fact that Jack's crew men aren't the most stalwart of companions?

In the first movie it was originally meant for Jack's compass to point only to the Isla de Muerta. The change in the second movie leads to some fridge logic in that after the mutiny Jack supposedly spent ten year looking for the Black Pearl, when presumably the compass would have been pointing directly at it.

The Pearl was headed for Isla de Muerta when Jack was using it in the first movie. To find one was to find the other.

Plus he didn't have a ship in those ten years, whereas the Pearl was constantly on the move.

And on top of that, the Black Pearl is easily the fastest ship of the Caribbean. Until Jack knew the curse was real and that the pirates were probably hanging around the one place they could break the curse, there would be no way for Jack to catch up with the Pearl without knowing its heading or where it makes port.

Why didn't Barbossa cut the ropes instead of his leg? Short term solution, I know, but wouldn't you have at least tried that first?

For all we know, he did- but as you said, short-term solution; the whole ship was coming alive under Blackbeard's power, and we don't know how many ropes Barbossa may nor may not have cut before one grabbed hold of him. Alternatively, he simply panicked and did the first thing that came to mind- and note, he was apparently the only member of the Pearl's crew to escape that battle.

Ships' hawsers can be extremely thick, and Blackbeard's powers might have made them more durable than normal while they were animated. Plus, if Barbossa was hanging upside-down with the rope wrapped around his ankle, jerking about so he couldn't twist his body for more than a fraction of a second, he possibly couldn't reach any higher with a blade than his own knee.

The after-credits scene in On Stranger Tides: It seems amazingly contrived that the voodoo doll would float all the way from White Cap Bay to the island Angelica was on, even more so to float directly to her. Who knows how far away they were from each other, and it would need an absolutely flawless set of conditions to do that. Maybe the spirit of Blackbeard from the world beyond guided it to her? I suppose with this franchise, that's certainly possible.

It's a voodoo doll- it's already supernatural. Perhaps it was trying to find its way back to its creator, but with him being dead and all, it went to the closest thing- his daughter

Alternatively, the doll shares a supernatural connection with Jack - maybe this shows that deep down Jack does actually want to be with Angelica? Or at least, a part of him does, and guides the doll to her

At the end of On Stranger Tides, why does it not occur to Jack or Gibbs to just try pulling the stopper on The Black Pearl's bottle first?

The stopper has been sealed in a different way, with some various magic runes or symbols, and they would have no idea what would happen, or Jack even realized what they were, and it was how he knew about his "Ritual" which he and Gibbs would need to perform

Gibbs may have already tried it while waiting for Jack; either it didn't budge, or did come out but didn't change the ship at all. Presumably, Blackbeard sealed it with Black Magic, so they need to undo the spell, not just pull the stopper/ shatter the bottle.

Or they might already have tried it with one of the other bottle-trapped ships, to see if just doing the obvious would work, and the result... wasn't pretty.

How could anyone forget the bit that Jack himself lampshaded in Curse of the Black Pearl? When one of his fellow prison inmates said that there were never any survivors from attacks by the Black Pearl, he questioned where the stories about it came from.

They were just that: stories. Pirates often spread rumours around. Plus, people exaggerate. We see how the Pearl, under Barbossa, raided Port Royal in the first film, so if this is a bench mark on how they conducted raids, it's possible there were survivor who exaggerated the effects.

I always took it to mean the ones spreading the stories were the cursed crew of the Pearl. Fridge Horror for any anyone who'd heard the stories.

In the fourth movie, if the Spaniards were intent on destroying the fountain from the beginning, why didn't they just destroy the chalices when they had them? They still could have gotten into the fountain, considering they managed it at the end, and destroying the chalices would have prevented anyone from using it.

Always figured they wanted to take the Chalices back to Spain as trophies. Their leader only decided to destroy them when he found the British soldiers and Blackbeard's crew at the Fountain and decided to make his point dramatically.

Or like Jack, they thought they needed them to get into the fountain.

They only know that the chalices are a way of reaching the Fountain. They don't know whether or not there might be others, so destroying the Fountain itself is the only sure way they can guarantee no one can use it.

So... at the end of the first film, Captain Barbosa is dead, and Ragetti isn't. And Ragetti has the wooden eye that was Barbossa's "piece of eight". Wouldn't that have made Ragetti the new Pirate Lord of the Caspian Sea?

Given how Sao Feng actively tells Elizabeth about her being a Pirate Lord and hands it to her, it could be that Pirate Lords need to be outright named as successors, rather than it just coming down to who ends up with the Piece of Eight if the Pirate Lord dies.

On Stranger Tides actually has a damn good reason for failing the Benchdel Test. It used to aggravate this Tropper, that Angelica never speak with Syrena; with Syrena being the only other female in the expedition, and a mermaid to boot, one would think Angelica would be eager to get to know her. But given Angelica's background, there are plenty of reasons she wouldn't want to. In the 1600s, mermaids are still creatures out of horror stories, not yet turned into whimsical fairy tale creatures that little girls would dream of being or meeting (Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" won't be written for a couple more centuries yet). Even after Syrena proves to be different from her more vicious sisters, Angelica's background gives her reason for avoiding conversing with Syrena. As a devout Catholic in the 1600s and an almost-nun, Angelica may view the mermaids as creatures of sin, since their soul purpose for interacting with humans involves tempting men's sexual desires.

Not to mention that, until she became attached enough to Philip to talk to him, everyone including Angelica probably didn't think Syrena could speak humans' language. By the time she started demonstrating a capacity for speech, she'd already been abused enough that she wouldn't have spoken civilly with any of her captors, male or female.

Unlikely, as there were at least two people who could attest that mermaids can speak at that point ; Scrum and the dark-skinned zombie officer. They were both on the longboat where they were used as live bait for the mermaids and both heard the blonde mermaid speak (in fact Scrum was the one who had a conversation with her and was smitten afterwards ["I'm in love!"]).

Alternately, despite her own efforts to appear tough-as-nails before Blackbeard and his crew, Angelica isn't completely heartless. She probably avoided having anything to do with Syrena because she didn't want to risk feeling sorry for the mermaid.

Philip states that Syrena's beauty indicates she is "...one of God's creature and not one of those dark things that found no refuge on the Ark." Did he forget that the Bible states more than once that beauty does NOT equal goodness (something he would likely know, being a preacher and carrying a Bible with him at the time)? Or that Syrena's fellow mermaids were also beautiful, but bloodthirsty and vicious? Or that the Flood which made the Ark's construction necessary wouldn't have harmed mermaids (nor was it intended to target them) since they're aquatic beings?

Philip has an obvious crush on Syrena. He says those things about her because he's trying to reconcile his feelings with his faith, not because he's trying to be logically-consistent about either.

In On Stranger Tides, Angelica takes all the years that Blackbeard would have had left, but Blackbeard had very little time left, since he was poisoned. And even if he wasn't, he was 70 years old at the time, and definitely didn't have many years left. So, Angelica must have died shortly after the movie ended.

Nope. She gets all the lives he had lived as well. It's said in the movie.

And the years he would have lived if "fate had been kinder".

Drinking from the fountain doesn't shorten your remaining lifespan just because you drank with someone else who doesn't have long to live. Doing it to a two yearold mouse instead of blackbeard wouldn't mean that you only had one year or so left to live. You'd just have three extra years from the mouse.

When Barbossa tells the story of how Blackbeard sank the Black Pearl in On Stranger Tides, the emphasis is on him and his escape, which distracts the viewer from realizing until later that Pintel, Ragetti, Mulroy, Murtog, Marty, Cotton and Cotton's parrot are all dead.

This troper insists they're just chilling in the bottle. With the monkey.

And the parrot's alive. First time Jack looks into it you see Cotton's parrot fly by Jack the Monkey.

There's still some Fridge Horror even if they are alive in the bottle; who gets eaten first, Cotton's parrot, or the monkey?

Parrot. Monkey's undead- you're probably not going to get any nourishment from him.

But the Monkey provides an infinite amount of food due to the immortality.

Assuming, again, that you can get any nutritional value from something that's been cursed and undead for several years. Methinks that more likely you'd get very, very sick. I wouldn't chance it.

Actually, none of these options would occur. Remember how the Black Pearl crew's immortality worked? They don't regrow parts, and they can be easily disassembled...but the various pieces violently try to reattach themselves. Furthermore, if they took the monkey inside before eating it, it would be all fleshified and perfectly healthy to eat (well, as healthy as a normal monkey, anyway). So here's how I see this playing out. The crew, starving to death, decides to bite the bullet and carve up the monkey. They carve it, still fully alive and conscious, into multiple pieces, then presumably fry said pieces or boil them or something to kill all of the mites and fleas and bacteria and stuff (which I'm assuming are not undead). Bear in mind that these pieces are still alive and vaguely conscious, a la the arm that Governor Swan chops off in Black Pearl. After being bisected and boiled alive, the monkey's still-wriggling parts are devoured by starving pirates, at which point they're dissolved by stomach acid...or are they? The undead pirates can recover from stab wounds, so their cells must knit their way back together like the larger limbs. So after eating the monkey's still-living, boiled appendages, each pirate now has an acid-resistant chunk of food thrashing its way out of his intestines, tearing through the stomach lining, and trying to reunite itself with the rest of its body...which is doing the same thing, in someone else's stomach.

None of which matters, as the crew would surely run out of fresh water sooner or later, no matter how much food they might hypothetically obtain from a regenerating undead monkey.

Perhaps, while in the bottle, it puts them into a "replay mode" where they repeatedly go through the final battle before the ship was sunk.

This troper simply assumed that the ships were in a time bubble of sorts when inside Blackbeard's bottles. Otherwise, his precious trophies would rot away eventually.

The parrot and monkey were both unharmed in that scene, and it's definitely been a while since Blackbeard took out the Pearl. It's vaguely possible that the crew just haven't eaten through their stores of food, and thus haven't resorted to carving up a parrot and undead monkey for one last morsel before they starve, but this troper thinks it's more likely that the ship-in-a-bottle spell sustains the crew indefinitely. Think about it. If this is the case, and Blackbeard ever needs to open up one of those bottles (say, if he needed a replacement for the Queen Anne's Revenge), then he'll have a serviceable crew and the ship will still have food and water supplies. On the other hand, if the crew's bodily functions weren't put on hold, Blackbeard would have a ship with no crew, no food, and no water. Even if he could animate the dead crew as zombies without a need for sustenance, he still needs to eat. And Blackbeard seems like the kind of guy who'd plan ahead like this, so this troper says the crew are alive and well. If bored out of their skulls...

Moreover, if the bottled ships weren't time-looped, they'd likely be rendered useless after only a few weeks of battering by the constant storms inside the bottles. Blackbeard wants trophies he can be proud of, not gale-demolished piles of flotsam.

For the love of Mother and Child, let's just handle this question the way the series itself would. When Barbossa's crew is eventually freed from the bottle (as they will be, given the fact that some of their actors are returning for movie #5), if anyone asks what they ate in the bottle all that time, someone will answer, "Sea turtles."

All those pirates captured at the end of Curse of the Black Pearl? They were hanged. Pintel and Ragetti only got prison because they were hanging around dressed as women during most of the final battle.

... and? Barbossa's crew were, from what we see of them, unabashed criminal scum. Even Pintel and Ragetti (though they're endearingly inept scum and spared on account of being the comic relief). I'm not a big fan of the death penalty in real life, but I confess I'm failing to see the horror in a crew of fictional villains being hanged.

They didn't get clemency, they escaped. They explicitly mention they escaped using the key-dog.

In On Stranger Tides, the fountain of youth's ritual steals the potential life of one person, and gives it to another, and while Blackbeard never said exactly whose life he was going to use, there just so happened to be a 14 year old boy that they had happened to kidnap.

It steals the years they lived, not their potential years.

It steals potential years too. Angelica clearly said(paraphrased) "years they have lived or would have lived."

Is it only me that has noticed the inherent horror of rooting for the pirates in Worlds End. Yes, the English are being led by a dick, but most of them are innocent and honest sailors, and when you think about it, the pirates are basically all just thieving and murdering scum! I say this, of course, but I still can't stop myself rooting for the pirates at the end.

It helps that except for a single raid at the beginning of the first movie, (and when not fighting for their lives and freedom) they all seem to be The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything.

Beckett is also thieving and murdering scum. He's just higher-class scum. It's a grey-and-grey morality situation, and we root for the pirates because a. we spend more time with them and b. Beckett's trying to seize control of all the supernatural power of the sea for himself.

Think over it, who was really worse? Governments kept slaves, took high taxes(and probably took payment in various disgusting ways), excecuted people with other ideals, religions and opinions… if you look carefully is one of Blackbeard's men wearing a turban, so, in that case shows that he's okay with other religions as long as they don't try to force it onto him, like the priests did. But then the Spaniards destroy anything related to other beliefs, and the English wasn't probably much better. I think the only good people at the time where farmers and fishermen whom kept the others alive while being treated like crap..!

In the opening of At World's End, the hanging scene, where they're hanging everyone remotely associated with piracy, the fact that all Beckett has to do is say someone is a pirate and to hang them, no matter if they were. The real big bit of fridge horror was the kid who began the song; Hanging is potentially immediately fatal, as the sudden stop can (and usually does) snap necks. The kid, however, was on the small side, and probably didn't gain enough momentum in the drop to snap his neck. He strangled until he died.

Take a good look at the Pirates of the Caribbean skull logo. Red scarf, plaits, the coins, the beads - yep, that's Captain Jack Sparrow. Or what remains of him. Just to drive the point home, attached to the plaits is a Captain Jack Sparrow voodoo doll.

Averted if you assume it's Captain Jack while he was under the Curse himself.

Dubious. Even under the curse, Jack's skull was covered by remnants of withered flesh. Most obviously, he still had eyeballs.

This is interesting. On the Blu-Ray main menus for the first three movies, the skull from the logo seems to act as a narrator of sorts. So the undead skull of Jack is telling his story generations later. Interesting.

Nobody seems to remember the Redshirt who fell off the Black Pearl in the third film while still in the world of the dead. He's going to drift in that sea for all eternity.

How about the pirate who got blown up from the inside in Curse? Governor Swann's encounter with a severed arm shows that the bits and pieces of the curse-bearers remain animated, so all those scattered, scorched bits were still conscious and trying to slither back together for as long as it took to break the curse.

Notice the voodoo doll hanging from the hair, yeah pretty creepy if you ask me

What about ol' Bill Turner? Why would Will want his father to continue suffering a Fate Worse Than Death?

If you're referring to the curse on the Flying Duchman, it was stated somewhere that the curse was broken when Elizabeth was there when Will got his one day ashore plus the fact that he continued its duties. Bootstrap stayed on as a willing, free crewmember.

Also, ol' Boostrap was initially rescued by Davy Jones from a Fate Worse Than Death strapped to a cannon at the bottom of the ocean. Being freed from service on the Dutchman might mean William the elder has to pass on to the realm of the dead if he leaves. Much better to make up for lost time with his son, both doing what they love doing best.

Speaking of the Pirates franchise, if you check out the Wikipedia page about Port Royal, it states at the end of the first paragraph, a number of horrors that descended upon the town starting and ending with two deadly earthquakes: one in 1692 and another in 1907. Fires, hurricanes, floods and epidemics were also in the mix. It almost makes some of the fates for the cast seem more pleasant than if Will and Elizabeth had gotten married and everyone lived out 'happy' lives in the town.

Probably a case where, as above, they knew the guns wouldn't work or the writers didn't do their homework, as anyone even minimally familiar with flintlock black-powder weapons knows a sufficiently humid day will render them inoperable, let alone having been drenched in the sea.

they probably all knew it wouldn't work, they were just too pissed at eachother to realise until they pulled the trigger

In Dead Man's Chest, Elizabeth fainting and the three guys ignoring her is Played for Laughs. But think about it—that same move in Curse of the Black Peal would have almost certainly have worked. Norrington and Will both care for her, and Jack seems to have a compulsion to help in situations like that. The fact that it didn't work shows just how much the men have become obsessed with the Heart of Davy Jones, offering some nice foreshadowing as to their roles in the third film: Will would lose Elizabeth for his father, Norrington would lose Elizabeth to get his job, and Jack has become more self-centered than normal.

On the other hand, it's not very believable- it's a suspiciously convenient time, she's done it before, and they must all realise that she's not even wearing any corsets!

She could have fainted from low blood sugar/the heat.

IIRC, before "fainting" Elizabeth dramatically cries out "Oh! The heat!"

They probably did not even see her fainting, each being busy fighting two opponnents...

Alternately, they each knew her well enough personally now that they simply didn't buy it. Will's a friend from childhood who was at point engaged to her, Jack's been hanging out with her on a pirate ship (as well as an equally hot and brutal island the movie before), and Norrington's seen her faint once for real (in the first movie due to a suffocating corset) and he's seen that trick before (when Jack was about to be hanged).

In "Curse" Barbossa cuts Elizabeth's hand slightly to get a "blood offering" from her. It is generally regarded as a humorous moment or as a proof that he has standards, but let's say they suceeded in removing the curse. Now they can once again enjoy carnal pleasures of life, and Elizabeth is the only woman around.

Would Barbossa let them? He may be many things, but a rapist? I'm not that sure.

"You took advantage of our hospitality last time, it holds fair now you return the favour!" (cue shoving her towards his crew who start pawing at her and pulling her clothes despite her cries) He most certainly would let them.

He was also more than willing to force her to "dine with the crew" naked if she refused his invitation.

"Waste not... *smile*.* Barbossa's 'joke' just got creepy.

After you've seen "Dead Man's Chest", now you know the basical tactic of Kraken (grab the hull, kill with tentacles the crew, drag the ship underwater). You realize (just as Will probably did, and later Jack too) that when Will stepped on what he believed was the Dutchman, the Kraken was just feet under him, still holding the hull and... playing with the corpses, momentarily calm and waiting. Just. Some. Feet.

Back when Phillip was talking about the mermaid, he mentions there were monsters that were not let in the Ark. Now considering the existence of the monsters like the Kraken and the dark magicla arts like voodoo and even questionable forces like the Fountain, what were some of the monsters he spoke of that were forbidden of the Ark?

Especially when you factor in everything the novels build upon when tlaking about Jack's youth.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy